Pages

EFF filed an amicus in support of a John Doe who was denied attorneys fees under the California SLAPP law. The case was handled by the Stanford cyberlaw clinic. The appeals court agreed with Stanford and EFF and reversed the lower court ruling.

On May 1 2008 EFF and the law firm of Sheppard Mullin Richter & Hampton filed a motion to dismiss a lawsuit brought against the operator of the popular online encyclopedia Wikipedia arguing that federal law immunizes it against suits over statements made by its users.

EFF and Davis Wright Tremaine LLP are defending the Yes Men and other activists in a lawsuit filed against them by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce over political criticism of the Chamber's stance on climate change legislation.

EFF the Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT) and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) urged a Kentucky Court of Appeals in November of 2008 to vacate a lower court's order authorizing the seizure of more than 100 Internet domain names associated with websites operating around the globe.

EFF and a coalition of public interest groups and law professors have asked a California appeals court to protect craiglist from a lawsuit that could spur websites to be less helpful in responding to complaints about user behavior.

EFF filed suit on November 1 2007 against the man behind "craigslist-perverts.org" -- a website that publicized responses to fake personal advertisements posted on Craigslist.org -- on behalf of an online journalist who criticized the controversial outing campaign and received legal threats in re

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) asked a judge in Illinois to reject a Petition to identify an anonymous MySpace user who allegedly posted fake profiles of an Illinois official because the request would violate both the First

EFF urged a Pennsylvania court to dismiss defamation claims against the controversial website DontDateHimGirl.com arguing that federal law shields the website from liability to protect the free flow of information online.

EFF is defending the First Amendment rights of a citizen-journalist to link from a public "wiki" to electronic copies of damaging internal Eli Lilly documents relating to the controversial prescription drug Zyprexa.

EFF has filed a friend-of-the-court brief urging a federal court judge to block two criminal statutes that unconstitutionally limit the free expression of millions of adults who use the Internet and other electronic forms of communication bringing the threat of criminal sanctions for private lawf

EFF and the California First Amendment Coalition (CFAC) asked a California appeals court to scrutinize a chemical company's attempt to strip the anonymity from a participant in an online message board.

EFF and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of the National Capital Area asked a Washington D.C. court to dismiss claims against a nonprofit watchdog organization and its operators arguing that federal law and the First Amendment protect them from liability in a defamation lawsuit.

EFF and The Progress & Freedom Foundation (PFF) have urged the United States Supreme Court to protect the free speech rights of videogame creators and users asking the justices to uphold a ruling throwing out unconstitutional restrictions on violent videogames.

EFF warned ABC not to pursue its bogus copyright infringement claims against 'Spocko' -- a blogger who sparked nationwide debate over a San Francisco radio station -- and asked the media giant to retract its baseless threats.

EFF along with Public Citizen and Public Knowledge are urging a U.S. court of appeals to reject jewelry-maker Tiffany's attempt to rewrite trademark law and create new barriers for online commerce and communication.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is fighting back against Uri Geller -- the "paranormalist" famous for seemingly bending spoons with his mind -- on behalf of a YouTube critic who was silenced by Geller's baseless copyright claims.

EFF has urged a federal appeals court to block administrative subpoenas from the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) that would reveal the identities of three pseudonymous Gmail users. In an amicus brief filed in the U.S.

EFF and the ACLU of Northern California filed suit in federal court on January 14, 2009 to protect the privacy and free speech rights of two San Francisco Bay Area community organizations after the groups' computers were seized and the data copied by federal and local law enforcement.

Dajaz1.com, a website dedicated to hip hop music and culture, was seized by the Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) division of the Department of Homeland Security over the 2010 Thanksgiving weekend. For over a year, visitors could not get access to any content on the blog. However, as w

In 1996, EFF and a coalition of public interest groups sued to block the Communications Decency Act, which criminalized publishing certain content online that the government clearly could not prohibit offline. Unanimously, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the law and established that online speech deserves the full protection of the First Amendment. Congress still didn't learn its lesson, subsequently passing the slightly narrower but still gravely dangerous Children Online Protection Act. Again, EFF fought back, and the Supreme Court has twice upheld injunctions against the law.

EFF set one of the first precedents protecting computer communications from unwarranted government invasion.

In 1990, the Secret Service seized the computers of a small company out of Austin, Texas, called Steve Jackson Games. The computers included the company's electronic bulletin board system, a precursor the Internet for exchanging private email. This case was the first to establish that it is illegal for law enforcement to access and read private electronic mail without a warrant.

EFF has urged a Washington State judge to dismiss "cyberstalking" charges stemming from rude comments left on a blog. In an amicus brief, EFF argues that the case is based on an unconstitutional law that criminalizes free speech.

In August of 2009, Pennyslvania-based company USA Technologies filed a federal lawsuit against two Yahoo! message board posters who roundly criticized what they claim is the the consistently poor performance of USA Technologies' management.

In March 2010, EFF filed an amicus brief urging the Illinois Court of Appeals to protect the identity of an anonymous critic who upset a local politician. Our brief set forth the appropriate First Amendment standard that should be applied to protect the online critic’s identity from curious or vituperative opponents. In November, the Court of Appeals overturned the trial court’s order and protected the identity of the anonymous speaker in question, adopting much of the substance of our First Amendment argument.

EFF filed an amicus brief in this case in support of a man who was indicted under the a federal anti-stalking statute for repeatedly tweeting caustic criticisms of a public figure, a Buddhist sect leader who herself made extensive use of social media. In December, 2011, the judge agreed with EFF and dismissed the case, ruling that "the First Amendment protects speech even when the subject or manner of expression is uncomfortable and challenges conventional religious beliefs, political attitudes or standards of good taste."

EFF defended the free speech rights of a website publisher who had repeatedly received baseless threats from the corporate owners of Barney the Dinosaur. The Lyons Partnership wrongly claimed that Dr. Stuart Frankel's online parody of Barney violated copyright and trademark laws. EFF filed suit on Dr. Frankel's behalf, forcing Lyons Partnership to withdraw their threats and compensate Dr. Frankel for the cost of his legal fees.

EFF helped protect free speech rights of users who provide online forums for the views of others. In this case, a breast implant awareness activist was sued for defamation in part for re-posting an article written by someone else. On November 20, 2006, the California Supreme Court upheld the strong protections of Section 230 of the federal Telecommunications Act of 1996, reversing an earlier ruling by the Court of Appeals. Agreeing with EFF's position, the court held that the 1996 law protects individuals from civil liability for posting to an Internet newsgroup a statement created by another.

Standing up for the public's right to make legal, fair uses of copyrighted material, EFF successfully defended the creators of a parody flash animation piece using Woody Guthrie's "This Land Is Your Land" - and uncovered evidence that the classic folk song is in fact already part of the public domain.

EFF defended the free speech and fair use rights of an online newsletter publisher after the world's third largest pharmaceutical company that accused him of trademark infringement and cybersquatting. Since March 2004, AcompliaReport.com has published original news and commentary about clinical trials of Acomplia, a new medication. Drug maker Sanofi-Aventis asked an international arbitrator to transfer the domain name, claiming that the use of the drug's name created a "risk of confusion." With EFF's assistance, the site's publisher asked a U.S. district court to declare that his use of the drug name was a fair use, made in good faith. The parties subsequently entered into a settlement that protected the publisher's right to the site's address.

The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) threatened security researchers from Princeton and Rice to stop them from publishing their study of a weak technological protection scheme for CDs called SDMI. EFF filed a lawsuit to protect the researchers' First Amendment right to publish the paper, and the RIAA backed off from its threats. The protection scheme was never deployed and the researchers were able to present the paper at Usenix Security, 2001.

When former Intel employee Ken Hamidi sent email messages to Intel employees complaining about the company's allegedly unfair labor practices, Intel brought suit. The company won an injunction on a "trespass to chattels" theory, arguing that Hamidi's emails had harmed Intel's computers. EFF stepped in to protect Hamidi's First Amendment rights, arguing in a friend-of-the-court brief that there was no evidence to suggest that his email had threatened the integrity of Intel's systems. The California Supreme Court agreed, ruling that the tort of trespass to chattels does not encompass, and should not be extended to encompass, email communications.

EFF helped convince the U.S. Supreme Court to invalidate a dangerous patent law precedent that threatened free speech and consumers' rights.

The court unanimously held that issuing automatic injunctions in patent cases improperly removed discretion from trial judges to weigh competing factors, including the effect that enforcing the patent would have on the public interest. This followed the reasoning outlined in a friend-of-the-court brief filed by EFF, which urged the justices to overrule the lower court and protect the public interest in free speech, innovation, and education.

EFF successfully blocked a brazen attempt to unmask the identities of anonymous members of an online discussion group for embroidery fans. The online group was created to share information about a long-running campaign to threaten purchasers of embroidery designs and software with copyright infringement lawsuits. The Embroidery Software Protection Coalition (ESPC), a purported coalition of embroidery pattern design companies, is behind the heavy-handed campaign. ESPC filed defamation claims against some members of the group and then issued a subpoena for detailed personal information about every single person who joined the discussion group--whether or not they had ever posted a single message.

EFF fought for bloggers' rights, defending the anonymity of an online speaker. In two messages from September of 2004, someone writing under the alias Proud Citizen criticized Patrick Cahill, a member of the Smyrna Town Council in Delaware. Cahill and his wife sued for defamation and sought to unmask the critic. In the first state supreme court decision considering "John Doe" subpoenas and bloggers' rights, the Delaware Supreme Court ruled that the plaintiffs had failed to meet the strict standards required by the First Amendment to breach a speaker's anonymity. The statements at issue were "incapable of a defamatory meaning."

EFF defended anonymous online speakers from frivolous subpoenas. After suing Internet users who had allegedly made critical comments about him on message boards and blogs, a Utah man asked the court to let him subpoena the names of the anonymous "John Doe" critics. The Utah District Court agreed with EFF and the ACLU of Utah that the plaintiff had not submitted sufficient justification.

After EFF intervened in the case, an Oklahoma school superintendent dropped his attempt to unmask the identities of a website operator and all registered users of an Internet message board devoted to discussion of local public schools. The superintendent sued anonymous speakers who criticized him on an online message board. As part of the case, he filed a broad subpoena seeking to identify the site's creator and everyone who had posted or even registered on the site, violating First Amendment protections for anonymous speech and association. EFF filed a motion to quash the subpoena on behalf of the site's operator and a registered user, and the superintendent responded by dismissing the case.

When internal memos exposing flaws in Diebold Election Systems' electronic voting machines leaked onto the Internet, Diebold used bogus copyright threats to silence its critics. EFF fought back on behalf of an ISP, winning an award of damages, costs, and attorneys' fees. Equally important, the case set a precedent that will allow other Internet users and their ISPs to fight back against improper copyright threats.

EFF defended online journalists and their rights to protect the confidentiality of sources as offline reporters do.

Apple Computer sued several unnamed individuals, called "Does," who allegedly leaked information about an upcoming product to online news sites PowerPage and AppleInsider. As part of its investigation, Apple subpoenaed Nfox -- PowerPage's email service provider -- for communications and unpublished materials obtained by PowerPage publisher Jason O'Grady. EFF successfully defended the journalists -- a California state appeals court held that they were protected by California's reporter's shield law and the constitutional privilege against disclosure of confidential sources. The court also held that Apple's subpoena to Nfox was unenforceable because it violated the federal Stored Communications Act.

EFF protected anonymous speech and fought off a controversial self-help group's abuse of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). The DMCA's subpoena process is ripe for abuse, because it lets content owners unmask an alleged infringer without first filing an actual lawsuit. Landmark Education sent subpoenas to Google and the Internet Archive to unmask whoever had posted a documentary criticizing the organization, even though the use did not infringe any of Landmark's copyrights. EFF defended the anonymous Google poster and the Internet Archive, and Landmark quickly backed down.

After a challenge by the Internet Archive and EFF, Washington state officials dropped their defense of a law aimed at combatting online sex trafficking ads by targeting Internet service providers. SB 6251 was a vague and overbroad statue that statute threatened to impose felony liability not onl

In 2012, EFF used CDA 230 to end a legal threat to a lawyer ratings web site (LawyerRatingz.com) for postings by third parties. EFF filed a declaratory relief lawsuit which resulted in a covenant not to sue by a small Florida probate law firm – the Law Offices of Adrian Philip Thomas, P.A.

EFF fought for open, transparent governance of the domain name system.

Karl Auerbach began asking for Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers's (ICANN) corporate records in November 2000, shortly after he was voted as the North American Elected Director of ICANN. ICANN management proceeded to obstruct his access to these records. Represented by EFF, Auerbach successfully sued to gain his rightful access under the law.

EFF and EarthRights International (ERI) are fighting to quash subpoenas issued by Chevron Corporation to three email providers (Google, Yahoo!, and Microsoft) demanding identifying information about the users of more than 100 email accounts, including environmental activists, journalists, and att

In February 2008, Swiss bank Julius Baer filed suit in federal district court against Wikileaks for hosting 14 allegedly leaked documents regarding personal banking transactions of Julius Baer customers. The court subsequently issued a permanent injunction disabling the wikileaks.org domain name and preventing that domain name from being transferred to any other registrar. EFF, the ACLU and the ACLU of Northern California moved to intervene in the lawsuit, joining other amici, arguing that the unwarranted injunction violated the First Amendment as an unlawful prior restraint. The court agreed with our arguments, dissolving the injunction and allowing the wikileaks.org domain name to go back up. Julius Baer subsequently moved to dismiss it case.

In this case, EFF wrote an amicus brief in support of Chris Korpi, who was sued by Julie Collier after Korpi registered the domain name www.juliecollier.com. Korpi and Collier were on opposites sides of a political debate over a California local school board election.

In this case, several businesses filed suit against Yelp, claiming that the popular review site manipulated and manufactured reviews in order to coerce businesses to advertise on the website.However, in their lawsuit, the businesses largely speculated about Yelp’s role in authoring

The ACLU of Northern California (ACLU-NC) and EFF filed a federal class-action lawsuit to block implementation of unconstitutional provisions of Proposition 35 – a ballot measure passed by California voters that restricts the legal and constitutionally protected speech of all registered sex offen

Twenty-two organizations including Unitarian church groups, gun ownership advocates, and a broad coalition of membership and political advocacy organizations filed suit against the National Security Agency for violating their First Amendment right of association by illegally collecting their call

Online news publisher Respublika asked a federal judge in New York to clarify that officials in Kazakhstan can’t use a U.S. court order in a battle over leaked emails to censor news stories that are critical of the Kazakhstan government.

EFF filed an amicus brief in this case, arguing that the government cannot require Americans to go through an export licensing scheme prior to posting and sharing 3-D printer design files online, because publishing technical information is a form of speech protected by the First Amendment.

In the digital age, repressive governments do not act alone to violate human rights. They have accomplices—often Western technology companies—with the sophistication and technical know-how that those repressive governments lack.

EFF supported Viacom in a lawsuit over a parody of a popular online video called “What What (In the Butt),” arguing that South Park’s reimagining of the work is a clear case of fair use and that the district court’s early dismissal of the case was correct.

The DVD Copy Control Association (DVD-CCA), a mouthpiece of the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), sued dozens of people in venues across the country and around the world for publishing DeCSS, software code that decrypts the data on commercial DVDs. EFF represented Andrew Bunner and Mathew Pavlovich to defend First Amendment rights in technically oriented speech, to fight the misuse of trade secret law, and to clarify the rules on jurisdiction. In the Bunner case, a California appeals court agreed with EFF and overturned as unconstitutional a 1999 trade secret injunction prohibiting Bunner from publishing the code. In the Pavlovich case, the California Supreme Court also found for the defendant, ruling that Texas resident Pavlovich could not be forced to stand trial in California.

Google v Equustek involves a legal challenge to an extraterritorial order from a Canadian court. EFF intervened in the case after a trial court ruled in June that Google must remove links to full websites that contained pages selling a product that allegedly infringed trade secret rights.